Well, I took the plunge
Yesterday is hopefully my last day of employment for someone other than myself.
I put in my 2 weeks at my Director of Sales role, and will be focusing on Recapped.io full-time now.
I’ve been working on Recapped on the side for 1.5 years.
Maybe this will change, but I feel like everything will work itself out. We have a MVP product, we have paying customers, it's go time.
That's all, just wanted to brag :)
What made you take the plunge? What were your fears and what was your thinking process in deciding to go as a Indie Hacker?
Great question. I've been working on this for roughly the last ~1.5 years, and have saved up about 2 years of living runway in San Francisco.
Honestly at this point part of this decision was driven by exhaustion of working 2 full-time jobs (9am-6pm at my real job, and then 7-11pm and weekends for Recapped).
I'm also working on a few other small side-projects to bring in revenue to invest in the business, namely some online sales courses (Sales 101 for Dev's, Cold Calling Framework, etc). Worst case, I can always consult sales teams for high-ticket contracts.
Fears - product doesn't progress fast enough, I'm not able to scale the sales process, clients hate it, someone raises a lot of money and tries to eat our lunch.
I've been very fortunate in my career that I was able to save up a lot of money and live comfortably, which definitely puts me in the small minority.
Congrats! Have you considered moving to some cheaper location to have an even bigger runway? Or is SF the best place for you to make sales from?
Yeah, I grew up in NC and still have family/friends there. Thinking about moving there - but truthfully my goal is to be self-sufficient off revenue in the next 6 months.
Congrats on the big move! I think @lynnetye would be happy to hear this.
What's the first big milestone you want to hit?
Woop woop!!! He jumped and now he's flyingggg! 🎉
Lynne <3
How did the Ironman go?
Haha, hi @JulianSamarjiev ! 👋It went really well! So much better than I expected. I just wanted to complete the damn thing in under the 17-hour cutoff, and ended up finished at 12:54:00 (exactly!). I learned so much about myself during that race, and discovered just how many parallels there are to being a founder!
Thank you for asking ❤️And hope you're well too!
#proud Great job! 👍
Hope all is well with Key Values as well 👍
Thanks Courtland! Yep, I told her the good news earlier this week.
Right now the first big goal is 50 paying customers (20% there), and rolling out some product updates.
Hi Mark! Recapped looks great, but playing around with your site I noticed that clicking the "Pricing" button switches to the pricing page, but I stay scrollen at the bottom - which on a laptop screen means all I see are the FAQs.
Hey Cenk, yeah it's annoying "feature" of Meteor. We're in the process of redoing the website - and that feature especially.
Is your site making enough to cover your original salary?
Oh god no. I left a very lucrative position.
Recapped is currently making a couple hundred dollars in MRR, but now that I can start focusing on sales, I plan on expanding that drastically.
It might be a very long time before I'm making my original salary.
That's how you do it - Congrats!
How will you be supporting yourself, with such a big financial drop? I want to quit my lucrative job too, but not sure how to stay afloat..
I’ve known for a long time that I want to launch my own business, so I paid off all my debts last year, and saved up 2 years of runway in San Francisco.
I could no longer give customer support and schedule product demos while working full time.
If the desire is strong enough, you can overcome a lot.
That being said - I am not recommending anyone to quit their job.
Edit: I’ve also been working on recapped on the side for 1.5 years.
A 2 year runway in San Francisco!? Damn, that's an achievement by itself, congrats!
Reach out if you need some feedback on how to convert more customers (the page is 100% better than avg but I can still see some potential issues):
pedro@cortes.design
There might be some ways to increase the revenue right now, let me know, happy to help ;)
Best of luck with Recapped!
Keep the job. Make sure you have a landing page, inbound marketing, get in touch with active companies/influencers in the industry, ...
Don't quit your job until you have a reason to.
Gret job and good luck with it @Fersh !
Keep us in the loop of how the plunge is going 👍
Thanks man :)
Just wanted to say - this is a really great idea. Rooting for you! I've worked briefly on sales teams and closely with sales teams, and I think this will be a really great tool.
Thanks Max! If you have any suggestions or any pain points you'd like to point out, it would be much appreciated.
Congratulations!
What was the point that made you decide to take the plunge and quit?
What is your roadmap for recapped?
Are you developing it yourself or do you have people helping you?
Congrats. I think you've got a solid product. How are you going after customers? I assume you're selling to other directors of sales not individual salespeople?
Hey Shaun, thanks man. What are your favorite aspects of it, if you don't mind me asking?
Actually most of our customers currently are individual sales reps & SDR's. We're doing a two-pronged approach: landing separate accounts with indiv. sales reps and then reaching out to their sales leadership with an expansion approach.
Just seems like something that would help people close sales. I did some sales many years ago and typing up a proposal was always time consuming.
How are you reaching those individual reps?
Congrats!
Hey Mark,
That's awesome! What was the inspiration behind starting this?
Thanks! I was fed up that my sales teams were losing 80% of our deals in the follow up stage, and didn't have a way to bring everyone onto the same page (outside of email).
Started looking for alternatives, couldn't find any that I was happy with, so I created my own.
Awesome, congrats @Fersh !
Really looking forward to trying out Recapped - finally have a sales process where it makes sense now :)
Glad to hear @louisswiss ! Let me know if I can help
I did something similar and left a cushy job 6 months ago (after saving for 1+ year of runway). It's amazing how much more focused the venture has become since.
Rooting for you man! :)
Let us know how it goes.
Super cool to hear that, congrats!
How long did it take to get start getting more results?
Also, how much time did you put in on the side before leaving the job?
Congrats! Recapped looks great.
Congratulations
Super! Sounds Awesome
🎉 Yeah Mark! Welcome to the other side.
Congratulations and good luck! You'll be surprised how much you can improve once you have full-time attention to your project!
Best wishes man.
Go step by step. Calm confidence
.
Congrats!
Unstoppable.
congrats!
Very cool man. Recapped looks very useful. Good luck!
It doesn't sound like bragging to me. It sounds like taking a deep breath before diving into a freezing lake!
Good luck and every success with your new venture!
Yeah, you're right. Luckily I have about 2 years of runway saved up, so the biggest opportunity costs are the salary.
Thanks for the wishes!
Congratulation and good luck!
I can't wait for this day myself. Congrats and best of luck!